Anyone who has ever weeded their backyard garden knows what a pain it can be.

Now imagine trying to weed up to six million plants on 60 acres of land. That’s how many trees Idaho's Lucky Peak Nursery grows in a year, and it’s just one of six U.S. Forest Service nurseries around the country. The government spends half a million dollars to have those weeds pulled, mostly by hand.

Researchers at the University of Idaho Coeur d'Alene, are building a robot that will be able to find a weed and get rid of it to help the current crop of seedlings and an expected increase in the number of plants grown.

Doctoral student Garrett Wells and John Shovic, an Associate Professor and Director of U of I’s Center for Intelligent Industrial Robotics, are part of the team building the weeding robot, and they joined Idaho Matters to talk more about the project.